


Twelve Hours

by DawnsEternalLight



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics)
Genre: Alfred - Freeform, Bat Family, Batman (mentioned) - Freeform, Batman - Freeform, Batman And Robin - Freeform, Damian Wayne - Freeform, Dick Grayson - Freeform, Gen, brother bonding, fear toxin, scarecrow (mentioned) - Freeform, there may be a hundred other fear toxin fics out there but I had to write one too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 08:44:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7260589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnsEternalLight/pseuds/DawnsEternalLight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been twelve hours since Damian had returned to the manor. Twelve hours since he’d managed to escape the Scarecrow’s clutches and return home. Twelve hours since Dick thought his nightmare had ended. Twelve hours since Damian’s had started.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twelve Hours

It had been twelve hours since Damian had returned to the manor. Twelve hours since he’d managed to escape the Scarecrow’s clutches and return home. Twelve hours since Dick thought his nightmare had ended. Twelve hours since Damian’s had started.

Dick pressed another cold compress to his youngest brother’s fevered forehead and willed him to open his eyes. Damian hadn’t been home more than a few minutes before the fear toxin had set in, and even though Alfred had given him the antidote immediately, the effects still hadn’t let up.

They’d tried every antidote they had, created one from the toxin they’d found in his blood, and finally just let him rest- it always wore off right?- nothing had worked. Not a single effort had done a thing to wake his baby brother from Crane’s induced fear coma.

Batman, Red Robin, and Red Hood were all out scouring the city for the Scarecrow. Dick would have been out there with them if not for Damian. Seconds before he’d passed out, he’d asked, pleaded with Dick not to leave him alone.

How could he say no to that?

So he sat, doing what little he could for his baby brother, while the others searched for answers. Every fiber of his being wanted to be out there with them, strangling the cure out of Crane and every fiber of his being wanted to be by Damian’s side, making sure he wasn’t alone.

He didn’t understand why Damian didn’t wake up. No other version of Crane’s fear toxin had ever lasted this long, and why had it hit only after Damian had made it home? Why had Crane gone after Robin in the first place? Both he and Nightwing had been at his mercy, so why just take one of them? Dick spun the questions round and round in his head, torturing himself with the lack of answers instead of letting his mind rest on the real reason for his distress:

The fact that all this was his fault.

He’d been there with Damian. He’d _asked_ Robin to help him on a case. It was the first time he’d asked after they’d both come back from the dead, Damian literally, and Dick not so literally. It had been fun, until it hadn’t.

Damian stirred and Dick’s breath caught. The tiniest of groans slipped from between the boy’s lips, and one at a time his eyes cracked open. His brother’s eyes stared at the ceiling for a moment unfocused, before slipping over to him.

Dick released the breath only when those familiar eyes widened with recognition. Damian frowned and sat up, the cold compress slipping unnoticed into his lap. The two stared at each other for a moment.

“You’re dead.”

That had come from left field, but Dick had enough experience of his own with Crane’s fear toxin to understand that Damian’s mind was still separating fear from reality so he just grinned, “Nope. I’m not.”

A frown and a shake of his head, “You are. I saw it. I saw- you were-” his apparent calm shattered as tears pooled in his eyes and his breath hitched.

Dick’s hands went to Damian’s shoulders, “I’m right here, Damian. I’m ok, you’re ok, we’re ok.”

Damian pulled back with a violent jerk, “No, no, no- You don’t understand! It’s my fault, it’s all my fault!” He threw his hands in front of his face as he said it, as if they alone could block any retaliation he might receive.

“Damian, look at me, please,” Dick pushed his brother’s hands down and tilted Damian’s face back towards his, noting that he was still overly warm as he searched his eyes. Behind the panic, grief, and fear, he saw a veil of suggestion- the toxin was still at work.

“Listen, Dami, what you’re remembering isn’t real. It’s the result of Scarecrow’s fear toxin.”

Damian tore his hands away from Dick’s and scrambled backwards, “No, you’re lying. It’s false hope. You’re not really here. I watched you die, Grayson. I saw it, and it was my fault, all my fault. I wasn’t-oomph!” his panicked rant was cut off as, in his mad scramble to get away from Dick, he tumbled backwards off his bed.

Dick was over the bed and beside him in an instant, helping him to sit back up. His arms tugged Damian close, some part of him hoping that the contact would help pull his brother out of the toxin’s influence.

Damian squirmed for a moment before burying his head in Dick’s chest, heaving sobs issuing from him, “I failed you, Grayson. I wasn’t strong enough, fast enough, or good enough. Everything I thought I could do, all failed. I know I messed up, but please don’t leave.”

Screw Bruce’s no killing policy, Dick was going to murder Crane when he got his hands on him.

“Damian, listen to me. None of this is your fault, I’m not mad, and I’m never going to leave you,” his words were quiet and soothing as he attempted to calm his little brother, one hand running through Damian’s short black hair.

“I let you die, Grayson.”

“I told you, I’m not dead. Can a dead person hold you like this?”

There was a moment of silence before, “Then why do I remember you dead?”

“It’s Scarecrow’s fear toxin. It creates-”

“Fearscapes. You told me about them when we first worked together. I’d never experienced one before,” He pressed himself closer to Dick, “Don’t leave?”

“Never,” Dick whispered, “How are you feeling?”

“The more you talk, the more grounded I feel.”

Dick took in a deep breath, “Alright, I won’t stop talking,” he paused then added, “Would it be ok if we moved back up to the bed?”

He received permission in the form of a nod into his chest and Dick adjusted his hug into a hold before lifting Damian back onto the bed and following him there. His younger brother scrambled into his lap, a move Damian would never make under normal circumstances, but then again, these weren’t normal circumstances.

“You stopped talking.”

“Sorry, want me to read to you?” Dick reached over to the nightstand where he’d placed a book earlier and pulled it over, “It used to help me whenever I was getting over fear toxin.”

Damian shook his head, “I don’t think I could concentrate on it.”

The book returned to its place, “Ok, then how about I sing?” He knew for a fact that Damian loved to listen to him sing. The kid would never admit it, but he’d caught his little brother listening in more often than not when he thought Dick wasn’t paying attention.

“That would be better.”

Dick wrapped his arms around Damian and began to sing, softly, gently, letting his voice wash over them, every word seeming to ease some of the tension in his brother’s shoulders. One song melted into another and another before Dick saw Alfred pause at the door, he nodded at the butler, unwilling to break the song long enough to speak. Alfred nodded back, and Dick spotted a phone in his hand as he passed by, he’d be calling Bruce and the other’s to let them know Dami was awake.

He paused to take a breath and Damian spoke up, “It’s not your fault.”

It was, but he wasn’t going to tell Damian that, “Yeah?” Dick asked instead.

Damian turned to look up at him, a frown on his face, “Don’t argue with me, Grayson. If I can’t take blame for this, then you can’t either.”

A half smile quirked on Dick’s lips, Damian had seen right through his lie, “Who says I’m not blaming you?”

Damian scoffed, “You’re too much of a mother hen to blame me.”

“And you love me too much to let me blame myself,” Dick grinned down at him.

Damian frowned, “I didn’t say that.”

“But you meant it.”

“Shut up, Grayson.”

“I love you, Little D.”

“That’s obvious.”

“You’re supposed to say ‘I love you too Big D.’”

“I am not going to say that.”

“Please?” Dick leaned over and rested his forehead against Damian’s, happy to notice that the excess warmth had finally faded from his little brother.

Those eyes, now clear, blinked back at him before Damian turned away, “I love you too,” it was so quiet Dick wouldn’t have heard it had he not been listening.

“What?” he prompted.

“I said I love you too. Ask me to say it again and I will make you wish it had been you under the toxin and not me.”

“I already wish that.”

Damian stiffened and Dick cursed under his breath, way to go Grayson, just confirm all of Damian’s fears with one fell swoop, what excellent big brothering skills you have.

“Dami-”

“Sorry,” he breathed. There was so much in that tiny word, regret, self-blame, fear, and all the things Damian would never say.

“You know I’d wish that of any of my brothers, right?” Dick snuggled Damian closer to him, burying his face in his hair, “I always want what’s best for you, and that’s no fault of yours.”

“I failed, Grayson,” he’d said in that sharp, angry tone that Dick knew was directed nowhere else but inward.

“So did I, but you don’t see me beating myself up over it.”

“Not now, but you did. I could see it, when I woke up. You’d been doing that thing where you put all the blame onto your own shoulders.”

Dick pulled back and looked at Damian, who still refused to meet his gaze, his eyes facing the comforter, balled up in his hands.

“Then it seems we have a problem. I can’t blame myself for everything that happened, if you’re going to do the same thing.”

He ran a hand absently through Damian’s hair and grinned as it was smacked away, his brother was defiantly recovering from the toxin.

“The way I see it, is that we have two options. Split the blame fifty, fifty, or blame it all on the Scarecrow, he wasn’t even supposed to be there anyway.”

Now Damian looked up at him, a mischievous gleam in his eyes, “If we blame, Crane, I get to punch him right?”

“Damian, even if we don’t blame him, you totally get to punch him.”

“Ahem,” Both boy’s attention snapped to the door. Alfred stood, phone in hand, and a smile on his face, “If you two are quite finished, I have Master Bruce on the line. It seems they’ve located the Scarecrow.”

Damian looked back at Dick, “We should blame, Scarecrow. It would be silly to let the punch go unfounded.”

“Silly, indeed,” Dick agreed.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always in a Dick and Damian bonding mood, this one just stemmed out of the desire to write angsty stuff and what bat trope is better for angst than fear toxin? (don't answer that question). Anyway, thanks for reading!


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